Beautiful, heartwarming anime short is also a commercial for miso 【Video】

Brief glimpse at multigenerational family has viewers reaching for their tissues and chopsticks.

“Make an anime about miso that also packs an emotional wallop” seems like a tall order, but it’s one that Academy Award-winning Robot Communications and Studio Colorido have filled multiple times. A year ago, we took a look at their first handful of ads promoting Marukome, one of Japan’s largest and most popular miso producers. Now, the anime artists are back again with a new short, titled the Coming to Tokyo Chapter.

So who’s coming to Tokyo? This elderly woman, who judging from her accent just got off the Shinkansen from Hiroshima Prefecture.

She’s in town to visit a friend, but first she’ll be spending the night at her son’s home. The dutiful guy has even come to pick her up at the station.

As he carries her bags for her, the woman thinks back on what a wild, uncontrollable kid he was. In the end, though, he turned out okay, even if his mother still sometimes can’t believe that he’s grown up, settled down, and is raising a child of his own.

After the woman arrives at her son’s condominium and exchanges hellos with her daughter-in-law and grandchild, the scene switches to the next morning. Like an increasing number of Japanese households, both the son and his wife work, and the grandmother is surprised to see that her son is the one who gets the family’s breakfast and bento boxed lunches ready.

▼ Marukome-brand miso products are, of course, involved.

The son’s wife has to dash off to work first, but he still has time to serve breakfast to his visiting mother. At first, she says she’s fine with toast, like her grandson is enjoying, obviously not wanting to cause any extra trouble for her host.

But her son kindly brushes aside such concerns. “Don’t worry, I can make something for you really quickly,” he says, before bringing her a traditional Japanese breakfast with rice and miso soup.

While she’s eating, her son heads off into another room to pack his son’s school bag. But in short order, the tyke pops in to tell his dad that “Grandma is crying.”

The video ends shortly thereafter, but the implication clearly isn’t that the son’s cooking is tragically bad. Rather, his mother, no doubt reflecting on the countless meals she prepared for him when he was still a child, now sees that her son is in turn offering that same kindness to her.

After watching the video, we’re thinking that we should give our moms a call…and also see if they’d like a bowl of miso soup.